


That Which Exists

by entanglednow



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-02
Updated: 2009-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-15 13:01:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's used to his dreams trying to kill him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Which Exists

Dean's used to his dreams trying to kill him. They've been doing it his whole life. Even before he went to hell, his brain knew a million ways to die.

The pressure on his chest, like he's suffocating, is one of the kindler, gentler endings he's had to deal with. But this time it takes a laugh, and a hand on his wrist, a quick dig of pain and warning, to tell him he isn't asleep.

Though the face tells him he is, the face that he doesn't have to recognise, when he recognises so much else.

"Were you dreaming of me?" Alistair fills the darkness above Dean like he belongs. Stares down at him through it like he wants to pick Dean open again, tearing the stitches just for fun, so he can slide back inside like he belongs there.

Like salt in an open wound.

He tenses, whole body ready to rise, whether Alistair lets him or not. Alistair doesn't, fingers tightening on nerves and tendons, until Dean goes still rather than lose the use of his arms.

"That's what I like about you Dean, straight for the kill, efficient, _persistent."_

"You're not real," Dean says roughly, just in case that makes it true.

"I'm as real as you want me to be," Alistair tells him. "Which is...hmm, a delicious irony considering all of the things which are already _your_ fault."

Dean swallows, stares at anything but Alistair's face, more than just a shape in the darkness. More than a hallucination should be allowed to be. Scent of outside, and blood warm, weight on the cheap mattress, and laughter that sends air skidding across his face.

"I don't want you here," Dean tells him, or what _can't_ be him, though his voice is dead, all the anger leeched out of it. Dean would give anything to pull some of that anger back, but he feels flat, like he doesn't have the energy for it, like he can't _find_ it.

"Now that hurts my feelings, it really does." Alistair says smoothly, words warm against the curve of his throat, they touch there and slide away.

Dean turns away, turns his head so he can't-

"Ah!" Alistair catches his jaw, twists his head back, and that's real enough, real enough to hurt, thumb pushing a bruise into the skin of Dean's jaw. "Now that's impolite, and besides, if I really am a figment who would I tell?" A tilt of head, and one side of Alistair's mouth drifts up slowly. "Who would _you_ tell?"

Dean shifts in the motel bed, elbows testing the mattress, testing his chances of pushing up and away, tests the weight of Alistair, which isn't so much a hallucination as solid lengths of bone and muscle, a weight that wants to be familiar, in a way Dean is _fiercely_ resisting. He won't think the words 'escape,' he won't.

"Get off of me."

Alistair stares down at him, expression unconcerned at Dean's sharp flash of teeth.

"I don't think you want me to, I really don't." Dean grits his teeth when Alistair's hand slides up his jaw, holds him in exactly the same way Dean held him not so long ago. There's a laugh, so close to his mouth that Dean can feel it, can taste it, he grits his teeth against it, which earns him nothing, nothing at all. It feels too real, rough drag of beard and fingers that press in hard enough to ache. Alistair feels more real than he has any right to.

He takes a quick breath and twists, but Alistair still doesn't let him, more gentle in his refusal now, like he finds Dean's persistence amusing. One of his fingers drags over Dean's pulse, too fast, and it's _fear_ , Dean tells himself it's fear, and adrenaline.

"So unwelcoming, when it's _you_ that brought me here, what did you want Dean, hmm? A touch of familiarity, perhaps?" Alistair's fingers make the words both a truth, and a threat, cold against his stomach, colder still when Dean inhales away from them, and they flatten against the skin, press down hard. Dean thinks he'll push them away, that he'll get a grip on Alistair's wrist and force it away from him.

But he doesn't, instead he holds it there, feels skin and tendons flexing in his grip, before he pushes, not away but down, deeper under the sheet.

In the dark, where no one can see.

Alistair is uncharacteristically generous, touches him where he most wants to be touched, and Dean hates himself even more.

"That's my boy."


End file.
